1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to electronic gaming apparatus, and more particularly to an improved gaming machine for improving the play and display of gaming graphics utilizing a vertically oriented video screen having touch screen input as a player interface to the device.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Electronic gaming devices have long been provided for playing games such as roulette, poker, bingo, keno, lotto and various other games, and have historically been constructed in a slot machine format typically including a pay board wherein the winning pay-out combinations are displayed; a play section in which electronic or mechanical reels, card-playing indica or other gaming objects are displayed; and a third area in which a player interface is provided by means of an assortment of buttons, switches, etc. More modern gaming machines have included a video display screen (CRT tube) that is driven by an image generator coupled to a microprocessor that serves as the game controller. In such video implementations, standard television-style cathode ray tubes have normally been used, and electronically generated reels, cards and other objects have been depicted thereon for implementing play of the game. In some embodiments, the pay board is also included as part of the video display, but because this limits the active display area available for gaming presentation, a different screen or type of screen separate and apart from the video display is often utilized. Touch screen interfaces have also been used in gaming machines, but are often limited in their application because of the limited space available on the video screen. Another limitation of the prior art devices using video display screens is that the display has been quite sterile in its presentation, often comprising nothing more than an attempt to electronically present a two-dimensional image replicating the functional display elements of the prior art mechanical gaming apparatus.
There is thus a need for an improved gaming station or machine that uses modern video graphics and sound technology to provide a complete user interface that in at least one aspect conveniently integrates pay board, play screen, and player input interface in a single uniquely designed and oriented video screen format.
In one aspect, the invention is directed to a gaming machine comprising: a cabinet; at least one user-interface button; a value receiving mechanism associated with the cabinet; a value-dispensing mechanism assoicated with the cabinet; a video display unit associated with the cabinet; a touch-sensitive device associated with the video display unit; a processor disposed in the cabinet and operatively coupled to the user-interface button, the value-receiving mechanism, the video display unit and the touch-sensitive device; a read only memory disposed in the cabinet; basic input/output system (BIOS) software stored in the read-only memory; a critical data storage software that causes critical system data to be stored in the nonvolatile memory; disk memory disposed in the cabinet and operatively coupled to the processor; system software stored in the disk memory, the system software comprising software representing a game that may be played by a player; encoded data stored in the disk memory, the encoded data having been generated from at least one message digest that was generated based on using an encoding function with the system software; secure loading software stored in memory that loads system software from the disk memory into random-access memory and verifies correctness and authenticity of the system software, the secure loading software verifying correctness and authenticity of the system software based on a comparison of data generated from the encoded data and data generated from the system software; and operating system (OS) software stored in memory, the operating system software comprising an application programming interface including a first application programming interface portion that provides a software interface to the video display unit and a second application programming interface portion that provides a software interface to the touch-sensitive device.
This and other aspects of the invention will be apparent in view of the following description of various embodiments of the invention, which is made in connection with the figures of the drawing briefly described below.